


Kaleidoscopic, a study of love and soulmates

by empress_of_snark



Category: Frasier (TV)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Fluff, Minor Angst, Soulmate AU, cheesy cheesy cheese fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 15:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21056420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empress_of_snark/pseuds/empress_of_snark
Summary: Niles sees in color the instant he and Daphne meet. She doesn't.





	Kaleidoscopic, a study of love and soulmates

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing fanfiction for a tiny fandom again! Yeah, I realize that this show's been off the air for fifteen years, but I only just watched it this summer. I started this fanfic at one o'clock in the morning and never actually expected myself to finish it. I did!
> 
> (and yes, ofc Frasier and Lilith are soulmates, don't @ me)

Niles Crane does not believe in soulmates.

His father does. Always re-telling the story of how his world burst into color the moment he met Hester, color that faded away on the day she died. His is one of the shining, if melancholy, examples of a life well-lived with one’s soulmate.

His brother does, begrudgingly. Even he couldn’t deny the evidence presented in the (admittedly muted) color palette of Lilith Sternin that sprung to life the moment he shook her hand. Frasier is a testament to one of the sad truths of the world: soulmates don’t always last.

But Niles remains firm in his disbelief. How else can he comfortably explain to himself the fact that after ten years of marriage, his world remains stubbornly black and white?

\-----

Daphne Moon sometimes gets visions in color. Never long, never detailed, but to her, they undeniably prove the existence of her soulmate.

Her parents are not soulmates, as her mum frequently tells her throughout her childhood. She never wastes an opportunity to remind her daughter that she never found her perfect match and Daphne won’t either.

Daphne doesn’t tell her about the visions. They’re her special secret that she shares with Grammy Moon and no one else.

She knows that her soulmate is out there somewhere, and that, whatever her mum says, he’s waiting for her.

\-----

“You’re Daphne?”

He does a comical double-take when he shakes her hand. At first glance, he’d already been stunned by her unexpected beauty, but now he’s nearly keeling over in shock at the sudden sensory overload of colors swirling before his eyes.

Brown eyes, red lips, blue shirt, brown hair, pink skin, colors he doesn’t even have names for—but he keeps coming back to her eyes: warm, dark brown, full of life, deep enough to drown him if he’s not careful.

Knees weak, he grips her soft hand tightly in his and waits.

Waits for wide eyes, a gasp, a smile, anything to let him know that she can see them, too, that he’s not alone. He holds his breath and watches her, can’t look away from her mesmerizing eyes.

Nothing.

Daphne smiles politely, returns his handshake, then easily continues with the laundry.

She doesn’t see anything.

He swallows hard, shoving down the ache of disappointment and keeping his face neutral. Soon after, he makes his excuses to Frasier and leaves, unable to keep from flexing the hand that held hers.

As breathtaking as the new world of color is, it represents another sad truth: soulmates don’t always match.

\-----

Daphne is twenty-eight years old and she still hasn’t met her soulmate. It doesn’t bother her much, but the real challenge is having to listen to her mum’s smug comments on the phone each week.

“He’s not in America either, is he, then? Which country d’you fancy you’ll try next?”

She focuses on the fact that she has a job that she loves and a boss who’s nice, if a bit snobbish. She gets along with Mr. Crane and adores Eddie, and Seattle is a beautiful city. The rain makes her just homesick enough to want to visit Manchester again, but not enough to book a ticket.

\-----

“Is Mrs. Crane your soulmate?”

He’s been getting distracted by the nightgown again but Daphne’s sudden question makes him pause.

He can’t lie to her—a nosebleed will give him away in an instant.

He can’t tell her the truth—he’ll just have to endure her letting him down gently and telling him that she’s sorry, but he’s not hers.

She’s watching the fire and he’s watching her and he has no idea how to respond to her question but if he stays silent, she’ll just wonder why he didn’t answer or worse, ask him again, and—

A clanging peal of music yanks him from his panicked thoughts as they both turn.

“Dr. Crane, your glockenspiel has sprung to life!”

Saved by the bell.

\-----

Dr. Crane forgets, sometimes, that he’s the only one in the household without color blindness.

“Daphne, would you mind passing me that green book over there?”

A second later, he’ll realize his mistake, stutter an awkward apology that she’ll wave off. His father will respond with sarcasm, inevitably provoking a fight, but Daphne will just ask for the book’s title instead.

Although, she also makes him help her color-coordinate her outfits sometimes, and she’s not sure if he wouldn’t rather be fighting with his father then.

\-----

Red.

The dress is so very very red and she doesn’t even know it. All night long, Niles has to bite his tongue to keep from giving himself away and blurting out that red is a magnificent color on her.

Who is he kidding? Every color is magnificent on her. Daphne brings the entire rainbow to life. She looks as gorgeous in a purple sweater as a yellow sundress as a blue tee-shirt as a brown potato sack, probably.

But this dress... god, this dress is different.

The color hugs her body in ways that make his throat run dry and if she keeps smiling at him like that, he’s going to say something stupid.

“Oh Daphne, I adore you!”

Too late.

The words are coming out faster than he can stop them, but while he spouts all kinds of ridiculous praise (“You’re beautiful, you’re a goddess”), he manages to hold back from ever uttering the word ‘soulmate.’

Later, he realizes that it doesn’t even matter—she wouldn’t have believed him even if he had said it.

\-----

Daphne knows that Joe isn’t her soulmate. It’s obvious—nothing happens when she meets him, her vision doesn’t change, and she can tell his doesn’t either.

She knows he’s not her soulmate. She goes out with him anyway.

What kind of world would it be if everyone only ever waited around for their one true love and ignored everyone else? Not even giving thought to any other potential happiness?

Not everyone finds their soulmate and plenty of them lead perfectly happy lives anyway. Daphne is nearly thirty and she’s getting impatient, so she goes out with Joe.

It doesn’t work out. She can hear her mum saying ‘I told you so’ before she even picks up the phone.

\-----

The heat wave is a lesson in exquisite torture.

Because Daphne is here, in his apartment, and she’s mad at his father’s girlfriend, and the heat and the anger are combining in a beautiful pink flush to her skin that he can’t tear his eyes away from.

It’s a long night, even longer than the last heat wave six years ago, when Maris demanded all the fans be moved to her room and he was forced to lie awake in a sweaty tangle of bedsheets all alone.

Several times, he nearly tricks himself into thinking that she’s struggling too. That maybe she tears her eyes away just as soon as he looks at her. That her blush is no longer from anger, but arousal. That her gasp isn’t a reaction to the cold of the drink, but the brush of his fingers against hers when he hands it to her.

No. The heat must be getting to his head.

When she’s forced to return to Frasier’s for her medication, it’s almost a blessing. He doesn’t know how he would’ve lasted the night had she stayed.

\-----

Roz can see in color, and Daphne doesn’t know why she didn’t know this sooner.

She won’t give away any details, only that it was a guy she met in college. No one special, she says.

“It was a long time ago, and it didn’t really work out.”

Daphne frowns. “I’m so sorry, Roz.”

“No big deal,” she replies with an easy shrug. “Happens all the time. Look at Frasier and his ex-wife. Soulmates don’t always come with a lifetime guarantee.”

It’s a sad truth that Daphne remembers every time Dr. Sternin is in town. She sees the lingering love between her and Dr. Crane, but it’s a different kind of love now. The love of two old friends who’d do anything for each other.

“Still,” Roz continues, waving the bottle of nail polish for emphasis, “can’t complain, right? He gave me the greatest gift of my life.”

“The colors?”

Roz frowns. “No, he gave me Bruce Springsteen tickets for my birthday one year. Backstage passes!”

They collapse into giggles, and Roz untwists the polish cap.

“Now I know you can’t tell but trust me, this color looks amazing on you…”

\-----

Throughout the first ten years of their marriage, Niles had never realized how colorless Maris was. As colorless as everything else in his life, granted, but even after he gains his second sight, it seems to him that she is just as black and white as before.

Her pale hair can barely be considered blonde, and severe, consistent malnutrition drained all pigment from her skin ages ago. Even her eyes, steely gray, remain the same.

Niles still loves her, of course he does. She is his wife and he refuses to ignore that, soulmate or no.

Somewhere, deep down, he has to believe that she still loves him too, even if she never says so. But that belief grows smaller every day of their separation.

\-----

Daphne doesn’t know how she got roped into dressing up as the Wife of Bath but it probably had something to do with feeling sorry for Dr. Crane not having a date to his brother’s Halloween party.

It’s always fun to play dress-up, even if she’s never actually read _The Canterbury Tales_ and her false eyelashes keep irritating her.

But for whatever reason, something always has to go wrong at a Crane party.

As soon as the younger Dr. Crane starts loudly berating his brother in the middle of the living room, she knows he’s drunk and she’s suddenly reminded of her childhood. Of the long, lonely hours spent waiting for her father to come home each night, then when he was home, wishing he was back at the pub instead. She grew up uncomfortable around drunk men, shying away from bars that looked too much like the ones her father spent his nights in rather than be at home with his family. It’s a part of her adolescence she doesn’t like to think about.

But Dr. Crane is not like her father, she reminds herself, not at all. He’s thoughtful and sweet and doesn’t make a habit of drinking to excess.

Then, before she knows it, he’s on one knee and asking for her hand and Daphne is sure she heard the word ‘pregnant’ somewhere in the speech and all thoughts of her bar-hopping father disappear in an instant because now she’s just confused.

“Oh, for God’s sake, you drunken imbecile! Daphne’s not the one who’s pregnant, _Roz is!”_

\-----

For a man of science, a man always seeking out knowledge and answers, Niles knows surprisingly little about soulmates.

Oh, he knows the basic theory, of course, and read one or two thesis papers in college, but nothing in-depth. He’d never been interested--it had all sounded like hogwash at the time.

Obviously, circumstances are different now.

Which is how he finds himself at the library on his day off, poring over all the books he can find on soulmate theory, coffee in hand, feeling like a college freshman again.

There are different kinds of soulmates, he learns, not just romantic. Some are platonic, some are even between family members. The bonds between soulmates are never exactly alike, but they are all strong and deep.

The history is endlessly fascinating. Ancient civilizations had hundreds of different words to describe their soulmates, and most believed the colors to be a divine gift from the gods. These beliefs continued until the mid-nineteenth century when scientists began conducting extensive research into the human brain. They declared the answer to be some kind of chemical reaction, although how exactly the first touch triggers the reaction is still debated to this day.

One book he skims even has an entire section devoted to historical figures who famously remained colorblind their entire lives. The list includes Jane Austen, Christopher Marlowe (allegedly), and, to Niles’s surprise, eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung.

He keeps searching for a list of people like him, people whose soulmates were one-sided. There have to be other cases like this, he reasons to himself. He’s desperate to be told that he’s not alone, not the only one going through this special kind of torture.

\-----

“It’s a shame about your brother.”

Dr. Crane tilts his head without looking up from his book. “Hm?”

“His divorce,” Daphne says. “Must be hard, after being married for so long.”

“Oh, yes…” He frowns sympathetically. “Divorce is never easy.”

“I expect it’s especially difficult when it’s your soulmate,” she adds, folding one of Mr. Crane’s shirts. “You must know exactly how he feels.”

Now he looks up at her. “Sorry, what?”

“Dr. Sternin was your soulmate, wasn’t she?”

He nods, slowly. “Well, yes, of course she was—_is_. But… Maris is not Niles’s.”

“Oh. She’s not?”

“No. Actually, Niles doesn’t believe in soulmates. Never enough scientific proof for him.”

Now that Daphne thinks about it, she realizes that he never did answer her question that night about Mrs. Crane. She’d been so distracted by the glockenspiel, she’d forgotten ever asking.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Suppose I just assumed.”

“Quite all right, Daphne. It was a natural assumption to make.”

So the younger Dr. Crane hasn’t found his match, either. They have that in common.

\-----

He finds himself confiding in Lilith, of all people. After their one-time affair, they grow into a new understanding of each other and strike up a genuine friendship. Niles is almost disappointed that she’s no longer his sister-in-law.

“You should tell her. The woman deserves to know.”

She’s right, of course. Though he’d never admit it, Niles knows she’s probably a better psychiatrist than him.

“Although,” she adds meaningfully, “don’t get any fanciful notions that a soulmate brings perfect, everlasting love. You know that’s not true.“

“I know,” Niles snaps, irritated. “I’m not naive, Lilith. But this isn’t just about seeing in color, it’s about how I feel. Maris was never right for me from the start and it had nothing to do with her being or not being my soulmate. But Daphne…”

He trails off and Lilith raises her eyebrows.

“You’re aware that I published a study on the psychology of soulmates a number of years ago?”

“Of course, I read it. It was very thorough.”

“Thank you.” Her lips twitch in her version of a smile. “So you’ll know that I interviewed several subjects about their first experiences with their soulmates and concluded that thirty-six percent of them reported romantic feelings _as a result_ of the realization that they had met their soulmate.”

Niles sips his coffee. “I recall, yes.”

“In essence,” she continues, “love was secondary, a reaction to the so-called ‘soulmate connection’.”

“Your point being?”

Her dark eyes soften a bit, almost in pity. “Are you certain that what you’re feeling for Daphne is genuine? Or is your infatuation merely a knee-jerk reaction to your seeing in color?”

Niles doesn’t know how to answer.

\-----

She decides to put the vision out of her mind completely. It’s a fluke, pre-engagement jitters, like Dr. Crane says. Nothing to it.

But it doesn’t go away.

She loves Donny, really she does. He’s kind and funny and dotes on her excessively and she wants to marry him. But no matter how much she throws herself into the wedding preparations, the vision comes back.

Her soulmate, faceless but standing before her in full color, down to his red bow tie.

And it’s not Donny. How could it be, when both of them still only see in black and white?

It’s not something that bothers him. His parents aren’t soulmates either, he tells her. And as a divorce lawyer, he’s seen his fair share of supposedly ‘perfect’ marriages coming to a nasty end.

“It’s a bit cynical of me, I know,” he says with a self-deprecating shrug, “but hey, I’m a lawyer. If all soulmates lived happily ever after, I’d be out of the job.”

She tries to listen to him and forget about the vision.

As far as she’s concerned, her soulmate may be out there, but if he isn’t Donny, she doesn’t want him.

That’s what she tells herself, anyway.

\-----

Niles isn’t sure why he hasn’t told Mel that he has a soulmate.

Okay, not true. He hasn’t told her because if he tells her, she’ll ask who it is and she won’t be satisfied with “she doesn’t matter to me now” because when Mel wants to know something, she will find out one way or another.

So then he’ll have to tell her that it’s Daphne, a woman he still sees on a near-daily basis, and Mel definitely won’t be happy about that, even if he tells her he’s not in love with Daphne anymore.

Which he’s not even sure he can tell her because he’s not even sure that it’s true.

It’s not like she’s ever asked.

Niles loves Mel. She’s perfect for him, in every way. Clean, punctual, pretty, and well-respected in all his social circles. He ignores the fact that no one else he cares about seems to have a very high opinion of her. After all, it’s a long-established truth that none of the Crane men can ever fully approve of each other’s partners (Hester Crane being the only, obvious exception).

So Niles is confident that with time, Frasier and his father will learn to at least tolerate Mel for his sake.

And she need never know that she’s not his soulmate.

\-----

“He meant Niles.”

How is it possible for three words to have such an impact? Days later, Daphne is still distracted. She’s replaying every interaction with Dr. Crane that she can remember having over the years and she feels so _stupid_ and blind.

It’s obvious now.

The Snow Ball, the Halloween proposal, the smile he gives her every time she lets him into the apartment, the way he’s always remembered how she takes her tea.

And now it’s Christmas Eve and he’s here, but so is Mel and Daphne doesn’t know what to say to him, but she wishes the balcony weren’t so bloody cold. Having his jacket around her shoulders is not helping her concentration in the least.

She takes it anyway, chilled hands brushing against his, and steels herself for an awkward conversation.

“Dr. Crane, I...”

He’s quiet, blue eyes watching her carefully as she—

Oh.

Blue eyes.

Dr. Crane’s eyes are blue and Daphne’s breath catches in her chest as she realizes this.

His hair is blond, and his cheeks are pink, and his eyes are so so beautifully blue.

Then it hits her like a speeding train. Niles Crane is her soulmate.

Daphne blinks rapidly, overwhelmed, unable to look away.

The rest of their conversation barely even registers with her because she’s so consumed by the fact that she’s seen this man nearly every day for seven years and never knew.

Why didn’t it happen sooner? Why did it take this long for the colors to show up? Why now, when she’s about to marry someone else?

It’s Christmas Eve, so she tries to keep her face neutrally cheery for the rest of the night, but her cheeks hurt from faking her smile.

\-----

Perhaps Frasier is right. Perhaps he’s simply reading too much into Daphne’s odd behavior because of his lingering commitment issues and his deepening relationship with Mel. Perhaps he’s just overthinking it all.

But what if he’s wrong?

She’d been so quick to tend to his hand, so gentle (almost loving?) as she applied the aloe cream over the burned skin when he just as easily could’ve done it himself.

His palm still tingles from where she’d touched it.

(It’s probably just the burn.)

Then, as Martin had entered, she’d jerked away from him almost guiltily, like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. For the life of him, Niles can’t think of a reason for her sudden embarrassment other than feelings for him.

But this isn’t the first time he’s gotten his hopes up. He’s fooled himself before and every time, he’s gotten his heart broken, never learning his lesson.

The wonderful, disastrous Snow Ball of four years past comes, painfully, to mind.

For once, Niles chooses to listen to his brother.

He ignores the jolt in his stomach that had appeared again when Daphne teased him. He puts out of mind the warmth of her hands on his, and how, more than anything else, he’d wanted to kiss her then.

He’s with Mel, and she’s with Donny.

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on.

\-----

The surprise bachelorette party, and everything following, is pretty close to a disaster for a lot of different reasons. Daphne feels as if she’s going to burst from all the stress looming in on her from all sides, even after her court-mandated session with Dr. McCaskill.

Though she doesn’t mention the Christmas Eve incident in her session, there’s a small measure of relief that comes from confiding in someone else, even a stranger. But she knows that Dr. McCaskill isn’t the one she needs to be talking to.

The elder Dr. Crane isn’t either, but when she breaks down in tears after Morrie’s funeral, she finds herself spilling it all out to him anyway. And while he’s embarrassed to learn that he was the one to let the secret slip, he’s surprisingly caring.

“Oh, Daphne,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

“That’s not the worst part,” she sniffs, crumpling his handkerchief in one hand. “You see, Dr. Crane, he’s my soulmate.”

“What?”

“It happened at your Christmas party,” she explains, desperate to finally tell someone about the moment that had been permanently etched in her brain for months. “We were out on the balcony, and he let me wear his jacket. Our hands must’ve touched when he handed it to me because the next thing I knew, I could see in color!”

She swallows hard, trying not to cry again, but the memory brings back all sorts of emotions.

“Fascinating,” Dr. Crane mutters. “I’ve heard of cases like this, of course, where the connection doesn’t happen immediately, but a delay this long is unprecedented! I’ll have to call Lilith and pick her brain. You know, perhaps we could even publish a joint study on the subject if we can track down a few more participants—”

“Dr. Crane!”

He stops, then looks abashed.

“Oh, Daph, I’m sorry, now’s not the time for that. This is about you.”

The apology doesn’t mean he’s put it out of his mind, she knows. There will be a phone call to Lilith later this week. But at least she has his attention now.

“So what do you think I should do?” she asks, although she fears she already knows the answer.

“I— I don’t know what to tell you, Daph,” he says with a shrug. “Uh, I, I think the best thing is for you to, to try to find a way to talk with Niles.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

\-----

The elopement isn’t his idea. He’d printed out an inventory of the weekend beforehand and nowhere on the list is the word ‘marriage’.

Mel proposes it. In that way of hers where she oh-so-slightly directs the conversation where she wants until it seems like he’s the one who decides to run for Corkmaster of the wine club or, in this case, fly to Las Vegas for a spontaneous wedding.

It’s not manipulation, whatever Frasier says. Niles was married to Maris for fifteen years--he knows when he’s being manipulated. What Mel does is suggestion, without any malicious intent. And none of her ideas are things he doesn’t already know he wants, deep down. It’s just a matter of someone else saying the words to get him to do it.

So no, he doesn’t come up with the idea of eloping with Mel.

He does, however, make the mistake that brings the weekend to a crashing halt.

She’s in the bathroom, doing her hair, leaving him to sit on the stiff hotel bed and think about the last time he was married. He’d been so much younger then, and a great deal more optimistic than he is now.

How it had all soured so quickly.

Dishonesty. That was their downfall.

There was no way of knowing just how often Maris lied to Niles, but he knew his own sins.

He told Maris that she looked perfect when, in truth, she looked unhealthy. He told Maris that he loved her parents, but knew they called him names behind his back. He told Maris that he didn’t have a soulmate, but he did.

He still does, and will for as long as he and Mel are married. And, just like Maris, she doesn’t know, won’t know unless he tells her.

Sitting in that hotel room, he realizes that he has a choice. He can continue to lie to her and let her believe that, like her, he doesn’t have a soulmate, and in another fifteen years probably find himself divorced twice-over. Or he can tell her the truth now, and finally have a real chance at being happy for once in his life.

He makes a decision.

“Mel?”

\-----

He’s back early.

Daphne had been planning on having the entire weekend to rehearse what to say to Dr. Crane (_Niles_, surely she can call him Niles by now), but of course he has to go and muck it all up by coming back from his weekend with Mel an entire day early.

For once, he doesn’t smile when she opens the door. In fact, he’s wearing a bit of a grimace. She glances at his hair (mussed), his tie (askew), his eyes (dark), and decides that what she has to say to him can wait.

“Are you all right, Dr. Crane?” she asks in a low voice.

He gives an uncharacteristic, hollow chuckle in response, then shakes his head.

“Nope,” he says in a tone of false levity. “No, I’m not, Daphne. But thank you for asking. Is Frasier here?”

He isn’t, but she ushers him inside anyway, declaring that what he needs is a good strong cup of tea. Maybe it’s awfully British of her to think that tea will solve anything, but she has to do something with all the nervous energy she’s built up.

“Niles, what are you doing here?” she hears Mr. Crane ask, but she’s in the kitchen and out of hearing range before she catches his son’s response.

She’s not trying to eavesdrop, but well… the kitchen isn’t so isolated that it’s impossible to pick up on conversations happening less than twenty feet away. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. Daphne keeps her focus on the tea and tries humming before she decides she’s too nervous to carry any tune, but she hears bits and pieces of what’s being said.

Like how Mel’s broken up with Dr. Crane.

She doesn’t hear the reason, but it certainly explains his early return and mournful air.

As she’s trying to figure out how she feels about it (sad? relieved? hopeful?), she hears something else. Just one word, clear as day, in the middle of an otherwise unintelligible sentence.

‘Soulmate.’

Her ears prick of their own accord and she ever-so-slightly leans toward the kitchen door.

“...your soulmate? Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Wouldn’t have made any difference. It certainly doesn’t change things now. It’s too late, it’s over.”

“What are you talking about? It’s not too late! Go and talk to her!”

“Dad, just because some force in the universe says I’m ‘meant to be’ with her doesn’t mean that—”

Daphne has heard enough.

So, Mel is Dr. Crane’s soulmate. She doesn’t know why she’s so surprised. It makes sense. All of her plans to talk to him and tell him how she feels vanish in an instant because she can’t possibly come between them now. He’s meant to be with Mel, and she’s going to marry Donny in three days.

It’s fine, she tells herself, though the growing lump in her throat says otherwise. It’s okay.

She’s always been a terrible liar.

\-----

“Dad, just because some force in the universe says I’m ‘meant to be’ with her doesn’t mean that—”

“You’ve been listening too much to your brother. He’s cynical about the whole thing, and maybe he should be, after everything that happened with Lilith, but I know better. Sure, things might not work out, nothing in life is a guarantee. But trust me, you’re gonna regret not taking the chance when you could.”

Before Niles can reply, Daphne appears in the kitchen doorway and he clams up. But she hurries to the door without even looking at them. His father’s brow furrows.

“Daph? Where are you going?”

“Oh, I, er, I’ve just remembered that I have to get a check down to the caterers. They’re closing early today.” Her voice sounds tight, restrained, like she’s trying not to cry. “The tea’s in the kitchen.”

Niles stands. “Wait, Daphne—”

The click of the closing door cuts him off.

“Well?” his father says after a pause, and Niles turns to find him looking impatient. “What are you waiting for? Go after her! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

He nods. “Right. Thanks, Dad.”

The elevator doors are almost closed when he reaches the hallway and, without pausing to think about it, Niles jolts forward and stops them to clamber inside. His right shoulder is throbbing from where it hit the thick metal, but he ignores it because Daphne is wiping her eyes and trying not to look at him and he has no idea what’s upset her but he knows he has to fix it.

“Daphne,” he pants, “I need to talk to you.”

“Right now?” She glances to her other side and for the first time, Niles realizes that they’re not alone.

“Oh. Good afternoon, Mrs. Richman.”

The woman toting the laundry basket gives him an awkward smile. “Dr. Crane.”

He knows exactly what Frasier’s neighbors think of him and, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t want to give them any more reason to think him eccentric, pitiable, or just plain strange. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Let the woman eavesdrop.

“Daphne, please.”

She has her arms crossed, looking reluctant. “Dr. Crane, I—”

The elevator doors open and Mrs. Richman hesitates, looking to Daphne. Daphne nods, as if letting her know it’s all right, and the woman leaves without a glance at Niles.

The doors close again and they’re left alone, both facing the front of the elevator.

“I’m sorry about what happened with Mel.”

The statement takes him by surprise. He didn’t know she’d been listening.

“How much did you hear?”

She shrugs. “I heard you tell your father she broke up with you, that’s all.”

“Oh. Yes, she did.”

“But I’m sure she’ll take you back,” she says, still looking very upset, despite her attempt at words of comfort. “After all, if she’s your soulmate, then—”

“What?”

With a light _ding_, the elevator stops again (“Oh, for the love of—!” Niles exclaims in frustration), this time on the fifteenth floor, and another woman gets on with a little boy. Niles doesn’t recognize them but tries to give a polite smile, still reeling from the last thing that Daphne said.

“Is there any place more private we could talk?” he asks her in a low voice. “Maybe back up in Frasier’s apartment?”

“I really have to get the check to the caterers.”

He can’t help but notice that she doesn’t appear to have her checkbook with her.

“Daphne,” he continues, determined to get her to listen to him, at least as long as they’re sharing an elevator, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Has there?” She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t react.

The little boy, however, is openly staring at him. Niles resists the urge to tell him to mind his own business (he can’t be more than four years old, can’t help it).

“Yes,” he says. “Because Mel isn’t my soulmate.”

Now, she looks at him. Now, the other woman looks at him, too.

Once again, they’re interrupted by the doors sliding open (eleventh floor) and once again, Niles regrets choosing to have this conversation in a public elevator, but mercifully, the woman and her son leave. The doors are still open.

Daphne looks confused. “But, but I heard you tell your father that she…”

She trails off and Niles shakes his head. “You didn’t hear the whole of it. I was talking about my soulmate, Daphne, but it wasn’t her, isn’t her. It’s you. Daphne, I love you.”

She gapes at him, brown eyes wide. In the hallway, a man approaches the elevator car.

“Take the next one!” Daphne snaps at him as the doors close. Alone again.

“I wanted to tell you,” he finally says because she’s not saying anything, “I wanted to tell you the moment we met, but you didn’t react when we shook hands and I knew you didn’t see anything, so what could I possibly say?”

The words keep spilling out of him in a nervous rush.

“I know it hardly makes a difference now, things are only more complicated than they were then but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t tell you at least once. You don’t even have to say anything now. I know you’re only going to try to let me down gently, and god knows I don’t—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Dr. Crane!”

Then she’s grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket and kissing him and it’s technically not the first time she’s done that—the Snow Ball flashes through his mind briefly, as well as those few, glorious hours of being her fake husband—but this time it’s _different_ and it’s _real_. He lets out a surprised hum at first contact before his instincts overtake him and he does what he’s wanted so desperately to do for seven years: he kisses her back.

His hands are entangled in her hair and after a moment, the kiss softens into something slower, softer. When she finally releases him, several long seconds (or possibly hours, Niles isn’t sure) later, he can still taste her lip gloss.

Before he can say anything, she gasps, “You’re my soulmate too, you wonderful, daft man!”

“I- you- what?” His brain is still muddled by her kiss. “B- but when we first met, you- you didn’t—?”

“No, I didn’t. Do you remember your brother’s Christmas party, when we were out on the balcony? That’s when it happened. I don’t know why it took so long, but it put me so out-of-sorts that I couldn’t look you in the eye for weeks, didn’t you notice?”

Niles thinks back to the afternoon he burned his hand. “I… I did, now that you mention it. I guess I just chalked it up to wedding jitters.”

“Oh, god,” she says, growing somber. “Donny. What am I going to tell him?”

“So you’re not—?”

“Well I did make a promise to him, but… I don’t know if I can marry him now. I don’t think it would be fair to him. Not when I’m in love with someone else.”

She’d already implied as much, but the actual words send a flood of adrenaline through his heart and he knows he’s grinning like an idiot and he doesn’t care because _Daphne loves him_. In seven long years, he’d never dared hope for reciprocation of his feelings.

She smirks at him. "What?"

Niles gives a boyish chuckle, feeling utterly immature and relishing it. "You love me."

The smirk grows into a wide grin to match his own. "I do, don't I?"

They’re drawn together again in a long embrace and through the kiss, Niles can hear himself muttering “I love you, I love you, I love you” against her lips. Now that he’s finally said the words, he finds he can’t stop himself from repeating them over and over again. He wants to keep saying them to her as many times as he can.

Daphne is giggling into his mouth and the sound is heavenly and he feels better than he thinks he ever has in his life.

Neither of them hears the elevator’s light _ding_ as the doors slide open at the lobby.

\-----

On the list of things Frasier Crane expects to encounter on any given weekday, his little brother locking lips with their father’s physical therapist in the Elliott Bay Towers elevator is pretty low, right alongside things like Santa Claus and Bulldog being respectful to a woman.

He doesn’t say anything—doesn’t have to, they spring apart almost as soon as the doors open.

Daphne is red-faced but smiling as she sidles past him with an awkward greeting nod, and Niles barely acknowledges him. He follows Daphne with a blissful smile and they exit the building hand-in-hand.

There’s a hundred things he could say and another hundred things he wants to ask, but for once, Frasier decides not to meddle.

He shrugs his shoulders and steps into the elevator, pressing the button for the nineteenth floor. As the doors close, giving him one last glance of the couple outside, he gets a sudden urge to call Lilith.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I was going to stick much closer to the events of 'Something Borrowed, Something Blue,' but in the end, I just didn’t want to copy the episode and I had to go my own way, though there is still definitely a resemblance.  
I guess most of all, I had to change Niles’s and Mel’s ending because, much as I love that episode and desperately wanted him to get together with Daphne, it does make Niles sound awfully callous when he’s so ready and willing to leave the woman he married two days ago. I know she wasn’t right for him, but still, part of me doesn’t like Niles very much for that.  
So I did a little canon fixing here and broke them up before they ever eloped.
> 
> Please kudos or, better yet, comment if you enjoyed! I'm listening!


End file.
